Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons

Silvia Federici. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2018. ix and 227 pp., bibliography, index. $19.95 paper (ISBN 9781629635699).

This edited collection by Italian feminist, scholar, and activist Silvia Federici features writings published in various venues over the course of her career. In essence, the collected writings trace the entanglement of capitalism, women's reproductive work, the burgeoning debt crisis, and the commons. With a foreword by Peter Linebaugh, and publications from the 1980s to the present, Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons offers a view of Federici's previous work that argues for its continued importance and relevance in the world. Although Federici is most known for her book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (Federici 2004), as well as her publications demonstrating the connections between sexuality and reproductive work, Re-enchanting the World offers a renewed perspective on some of the other key theories and ideologies Federici has delved into throughout her career. The inclusion and ordering of her previous publications successfully place her work among larger discussions concerning Marxist accumulation, the political importance of the commons, and the role of debt in capitalism and the creation of the proletariat.

Edits to these previous publications also put her work in conversation with the growing contemporary scholarship on activist responses to these capitalist mechanisms, and the global turn toward movements that emphasize the production of commons as a salient response to neoliberalism. This includes the politics of the Zapatistas, the Occupy movement, as well as the protesting of the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock. Serving as inspiration for generations of feminist activism, Federici's work has incessantly queried these topics over the years, and the writings contained in this book continue to foreground the disruptions and exploitations one can see today. Throughout the book, the reader can see the marking of Federici's lifelong commitment to activism across multiple scales, whether that be the creation of the International Wages for Housework Campaign, her years of teaching in Nigeria during the enforcement of International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs, or her workers' autonomy activism spanning across the globe.

Re-enchanting the World is divided into two main parts. The first, “On the New Enclosures,” contains five writings capturing the relationship between the enclosure of the commons, the globalization of capitalism, and debt. In clear and powerful words, each writing examines the direct connections between the prevention of subsistence through land enclosures, dispossession, the creation of a working class, and the use of debt to further enclose across different contexts. Although reflecting on the history of enclosures as instrumental to the formation of the world proletariat, Federici never loses sight of the control over women's reproductive capacities and the continued resistance to these processes. For example, writing on the devastation caused by the World Bank in African countries, Federici pays special attention to the uprisings and riots by African workers, in particular women and students. The prevalence of these problems today does not go unacknowledged, such as how the current student debt crisis in the United States is paralleled to other debt crises throughout the years. In this way, Federici's work, while paying homage to the way debt has historically been the means to furthering capitalism's reach, interrogates today's manifestations as well.

The second part, “On the Commons,” contains nine texts that more thoroughly examine the political work commons are doing in the context of a Marxist analysis of capitalism. The publications therein serve to delineate commons and commoning from the quasi commons that have been coopted by capitalist logic, such as gated communities and conservation efforts, as well as dive into the deeper implications of commons in particular contexts (specifically in Africa and Latin America). Importantly, these writings also include various examples of social movements incorporating commoning into their political objectives. This part of the book also includes Federici's scholarship demonstrating the undeniably vast contributions that feminism has brought to conceptions of the commons, especially as it challenges sexual divisions of reproductive work and promotes the collectivization of such work. The inclusion of Federici's writings that examine the role of women in fighting for the commons, and how women are often conceived of as commons themselves, brings another dimension to the book that reminds the reader of the inseparability of capitalism and patriarchy. Federici's book ends with a chapter not previously published. This text visits the title, challenging Weber's assertion that the world is experiencing disenchantment, or rather, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to see beyond the logic of capitalist development. She speaks instead to a re-enchanting of the world—a practice that assembles the arguments threaded throughout the book—that argues for a future-oriented politics of the commons that imagines noncapitalist possibilities.

Re-enchanting the World additionally provides an accessible tool for navigating the historical contexts that paved the way for present configurations of power. For me, as a new scholar in geography, Federici's book has been incredibly formative in my understanding of the politics of space and social movements as they are rooted in historical processes. Her ability to weave together feminism and Marxism as frameworks of analysis to uncover the importance of women's work and the communal creation of commons across cultural, historical, and geographical settings is incredibly valuable. She proves consistently how feminist and Marxist analyses are applicable to a politics of the commons, and how such a politics can be a global struggle. These ideas not only leave space for solidarity, but encourage a recognition of difference through collective struggle—a feminist initiative that continues to challenge even the most committed activists. Federici's vision of cooperation through an acknowledgment of the “contexts of contexts,” or her dedication to recognizing and exploring the different histories of both resistance and suppression, will certainly inspire any reader. Linebaugh says this best in his foreword: “she peers beneath the surface” (p. xiv).

In all of these ways, Federici's publications continue to be relevant to contemporary issues addressed by geographers. Feminist political ecology and economy, and other subdisciplines engaging in the intersection of commons, feminism, and Marxism, would benefit from revisiting these publications for their powerful analyses and complex formulations of commoning. In fact, I remain surprised that Federici's work is not as routinely revisited by geographers. Her interests span between Marxism and anarchism, social movements and autonomy, workers' rights and women's reclamation of land and reproduction, and theorizing from the South and Indigenous sovereignty. The book is therefore suitable for geographers doing activist scholarship, regardless of where these activists stand on the spectrum of leftist politics, and geographers interested in any of the aforementioned topics. It would also serve as an excellent addition to syllabi concentrated on topics of power, feminism, Marxism, commons, commoning, economics, or social movements. Re-enchanting the World is ultimately an invaluable collection and guide for navigating and resisting capitalism.